A Guide to the Eleanor S. Greenhill Papers, 1967-1983

Eleanor Simmons Greenhill was a distinguished Medievalist and one of the formative forces behind the development of the graduate art history program at UT. The papers include memos, correspondence, administrative files, reports, and printed material pertaining to art history and the UT Department of Art and Art History.

Eleanor Simmons Greenhill grew up in Lubbock, Texas. She earned an undergraduate degree from Texas Tech University in 1934, her MA in Comparative Medieval Literature from Columbia University in 1945, and her PhD in the History of Art from the University of Munich in 1959. She taught at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in the 1960s. Honored with the Ashbel Smith Professorship in 1981, Dr. Greenhill continued teaching and serving as one of the leading forces behind the development of the graduate art history program at UT until she retired in 1985.

A distinguished Medievalist, Dr. Greenhill was a noted scholar of French Gothic manuscripts and the author of several publications, including the Dictionary of Art, Dell Publishing, 1974. In 1988 the UT art history faculty named the annual graduate student symposium the Eleanor Greenhill Art History Symposium in her honor. She died in 2009.

The Eleanor S. Greenhill Papers, 1967-1983, contain classified correspondence files of Greenhill during her years as professor in the University of Texas at Austin Department of Art and Art History. Departmental records and administrative files relating to hiring faculty, their salaries, promotion, and tenure are included, as are files documenting the program and its history and standards. Faculty meeting minutes, memos, reports, correspondence, and administrative files document the workings of the Department, and correspondence includes letters of congratulation to Greenhill upon her appointment as Ashbel Smith Professor of Art in 1981. Other 1981 correspondence pertains to Greenhill's role as College of Fine Arts Commencement Marshal. A few pieces of printed material pertain to Medieval Studies at UT. Furthermore, the papers document Greenhill's involvement with the College Art Association of America (CAA) in the early 1980s.

Organization and Arrangement

Dr. Greenhill's original separation of materials into file folders was maintained, but put into chronological order to facilitate the understanding of the history of the department. Original folders that had titles or descriptive information were kept in the collection.